Trump is weaponizing DOJ against his opponents

Trump is using the Department of Justice to hunt opponents who have gotten in his way, ending professional norms since Watergate that have kept federal prosecutions mostly above politics.

Since the 2016 campaign, President Donald Trump has proclaimed his intention to prosecute political foes and critics through his direction of the Department of Justice (DOJ). With defenders of professional norms inside the Department of Justice now purged and key positions filled with officials willing to pursue the president’s wishes, this new administration has begun to fulfill Trump’s promise. Even if conviction in all the cases discussed below is unlikely, they send a message to potential critics to remain silent.

Over the last few weeks, Trump’s first-term national security advisor John Bolton and current Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook became the latest targets of DOJ investigations launched against government officials for upsetting Trump. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents searched Bolton’s home and office for classified materials, while Trump and other cabinet officials said Cook is being investigated by DOJ for mortgage fraud. Trump used the pretext of the Cook investigation to fire her.

Bolton and Cook join a long list of public officials Trump either has threatened with federal prosecution or have had investigations initiated against by DOJ. Earlier in August, Attorney General Pam Bondi created an investigatory “strike force” and instructed federal prosecutors to launch a grand jury investigation of former President Barack Obama and top officials in his administration for supposed election interference in 2016. The FBI also is investigating its former director James Comey (fired by Trump in his first term) and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan for allegedly making false statements to Congress. Other DOJ targets include Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Trump has issued executive orders directing Bondi investigate two of his own first-term appointees, former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs, who he fired for not lying about the security of the 2020 election, and former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor, who wrote a notorious anonymous op-ed criticizing Trump.

It’s all pretense.

Trump set this summer’s swirl of charges in place on his first day of office, issuing an executive order directing the Attorney General, Director of National Intelligence, and other agency heads to identify instances when the federal government was “weaponized” against him during the Biden Administration. DOJ established a “Weaponization Working Group” shortly thereafter. Trump named January 6 defendant-activist Ed Martin to head the working group in May after his nomination to be US Attorney for the District of Columbia failed. Martin has no prosecutorial background and had trampled established DOJ rules designed to prevent the politicization of law enforcement investigations.

The Justice Department is investigating public figures for crimes like improper custody of classified documents (which Trump himself was being prosecuted for before the 2024 election, and which was never resolved), mortgage fraud, and perjury because charging them with opposing Administration policy or criticizing the president would be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court, however, has complicated the relationship between the president and DOJ prosecutorial powers in its decision in Trump v. U.S., which granted Trump immunity from his own prosecution in the classified documents case on the finding that the president could not be held criminally liable for actions performed in office. In the majority decision, the court found that the Constitution allows the president not only to discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with Justice Department officials as part of the Executive branch, but authority over them. This finding breaks with long-standing norms within the Executive branch and the DOJ. Although the court stopped short of saying so directly in its decision, this finding also opens up potential interpretation of the decision that the president has the power to direct DOJ to prosecute specific people. “Granting the president this power would create an executive power incompatible with the guarantees of the Bill of Rights,” Protect Democracy concludes in a report on the ramifications on the case.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has shaped the department around a broad reading of Trump v. U.S., scaling back some of its compendious internal policies. Unlike her predecessors, she has not issued a memorandum outlining a “contacts policy” that restricts contacts between DOJ officials and the White House. Such memos date back to the Carter Administration, which sought to reestablish DOJ independence and objectivity after the Nixon Administration tried to use it to investigate political enemies. Administrations have followed the practice ever since. Bondi also has instructed the Weaponization Working Group to provide quarterly progress reports to the White House.

Bondi also eviscerated the department’s Public Integrity Section, which was designed to bring a level of professionalism to the prosecution of government officials. DOJ created the section in 1976 after the Watergate scandal specifically to provide expertise in cases involving criminal misconduct by officials in all three branches of the federal government. Under department guidelines, it was required to review any cases involving a sitting member of Congress. Bondi suspended that requirement and reduced its staff from 30 attorneys to five through reassignments and resignations.

After the policy change, the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s office charged Rep. LaMonica McIver with three felonies while conducting an oversight visit of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark, NJ. (The FY2024 DHS Appropriations Act allows members of Congress to make unannounced visits to ICE detention facilities.) The person in charge of the office at the time was Alina Habba, Trump’s former personal attorney whom the President named “acting” head of the office. A judge ruled her installation violated the Vacancies Reform Act.

The Administration has made other personnel changes to tighten control over the department. In February, President Trump ordered the firing of all U.S. Attorneys appointed during the Biden Administration. More than 200 career civil servants across the department also have been fired.

As recently as 20 years ago, the firing of U.S. Attorneys in the middle of a presidential term was enough of an assault on Justice Department political independence to create a political scandal. Congress investigated the dismissal of only seven by President George W. Bush in 2006 in a backlash that forced Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to resign. President Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General Edwin Meese III also resigned under suspicion he was using his office to benefit Reagan supporters involved in a kickback scheme. (The lead U.S. Attorney investigating that case was none other than Rudolph Giuliani.)